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Thursday, 26 September 2013

Eve Online: Blink Announced as Winter Expansion

CCP announced the eagerly awaited Winter 2013 expansion for Eve Online today, revealing it to be called 'Blink'. Although the feature page is somewhat incomplete at present, it and its accompanying Dev Blog do give some indication as to what we can expect to see.

Every special edition ship - from Gold and Silver Magnates to Etanas and Cambonians - will be resurrected, with fifty of each hull being provided to the controversial lottery website SOMER Blink. A variety of monocles will also be raffled on the site, along with various other rare items. A button will also be added to the wallet window that will allow players to directly deposit isk into SOMER Blink's account, cutting out the need to search for the corporation through the People and Places window - which previously deterred many people from blinking.

Understandably this has caused a lot of anger in the Eve community; some believe it is wrong that previously dead ships such as the Golden Magnate are being revived, some believe CCP are showing favouritism towards SOMER (which some members of the community were banned for implying earlier this year) and some people just hate SOMER Blink. While some of them voiced their discontent in a forum thread, others chimed in their support for the expansion. Turelus, one of the advocates of the expansion, told us of his excitement: "I just can't wait for this expansion, it's going to be so good! I've already lost over 4 billion isk on Blink, but now I get the chance to waste even more on something I've got nearly no chance of winning! I know that sounds sarcastic, but if I sink all my isk into blinking I'll have a 1 in 20,000 chance of winning a monocle! Those are the sorts of odds I live for!"

CCP Navigator replied to the mob, though it's not known if this was a serious post as it contains several false statements, such as "SOMER Blink have been one of the most philanthropic groups in Eve." It appears Navigator has confused the meaning of 'philanthropist' with the meaning of 'thief', as SOMER has been known for making a lot more players bankrupt than it has solvent. Even those who don't support the move itself can see the positives of it though. Eve-bet have already started a bet on the number of industrials carrying the CCP-gifted prizes that will be killed in Jita. 100 billion isk has already been bet, "more than 8" is the most popular option with 1.2 odds.

Other features included giving away five PLEX to everyone who goes to Eve Vegas, along with a free ticket to stroke CCP Hellmar's facial hair for up to half a minute. This has been the most well received feature of the expansion, with hundreds of 'beard tickets' being claimed. Warp speeds of all ships will also be increased, to allow prize carrying SOMER Blink freighters to get to their destinations faster. Although many players find some aspects of the expansion undesirable, most of them believe the beard stroking ticket promises to be an exciting feature that can be built upon in the future. Time will tell whether the expansion will be able to beat the legendary Incarna.